Road Block Anyone?

Recently I have been in this design road block. I've told you all in a previous post, that I am redesigning my dining room. The table is finished. It's pretty and I'm pretty proud of my refinishing skills. If you haven't gotten a chance to read about it, you can read more about the processes here, here and here. 

See, I thought I knew what I wanted. I swore( I know naughty, naughty. Finger wagging and head shaking) I knew what I wanted. I had fabrics picked out, a design board made and paint and materials all priced out. But I couldn't figure out which pattern should on the windows and which one on the floor. I was stumped. Completely. I was thinking a geometric print on the windows and then a damask print on the floors. I couldn't picture it at all. I kept going back and forth, wondering if it would be too much have a pattern on every surface.

Remember this beauty? It got the old nix-o. Three strikes. It's O-U-T!!!

Then I was hit with open-mindedness. A bunch of what-ifs popped up and flooded my mind. What if I added a bold color instead of just having grays, whites and browns? What if I didn't paint the chairs? Is twill the best fabric of choice for everyday dining? How would velvet on the chairs look? What if I did a solid fabric on the chairs instead of stripes?  And so on and so forth. 

So out with the old in with the new right?

Oh yeah baby. Boo-Yeeeahh!!! I LOVE this!!! Just which print for the drapes?

I had to take a step back and breathe. I took a week from blogging and from designing(a new found hobby/love). Then a few days ago I started to clean my dining room. It's the first space you walk into when you enter my home and so I'm a little OCD about keeping up elementary appearances lol. I have these red Pier 1 candles in glass hurricanes on my table as well as a white decorative bowl with oranges and a yellow vase with red and cream silk flowers. As I was scrubbin-a-dubb-dubbing away, the color of the oranges stood out to me. Something about the gray of the table and the boldness of the fruit caught my eye. Then I looked up at the cream flowers and I knew I was onto something. But it just wasn't right. I omitted the red candles and the red flowers from the vase, then I added orange Pier 1 candles to the hurricane vases. Voila!! It was perfect! I knew my new color scheme. The orange was just the perfect contrast and pop of color the space needed. Gray and orange; it's soft but bold. Feminine but masculine. It's Perfection. Total cheesiness huh?

As for the chairs? I'm going to leave them unfinished. I love the color of the wood with the rest of the color palette. I decided to change the fabric from twill to linen during all of this enlightenment. I thought the switch would help soften up the room. I'm using the Warsa Linen from Gray Line Linen on the chairs and for the floor cloth. It'll be my first time ordering from the company and using their fabrics. I've heard great things about them from The Little Green Notebook(you should check out her blog). Warsa Linen is a heavier weight linen good for suiting and drapery. So I figured that it would hold up on everyday dining chairs. 

I'll also be using the same linen but in a different color for the floor cloth under the table. It will be lighter than the chairs to add contrast, texture and brightness to the room. 

Tomorrow I'll be releasing my updated design board for this "new" dining room. I'm proud because by stepping away from my blog and Pinterest I was able to come up with this color palette on my own. It's a thinking-outside-the-box for me type thing. I am a creature of color habit. I always have been. But since I've been blogging and experiencing other blogs my tastes have changed. And I like it.

My next projects will include: refinishing my living room end tables, finding commode style( not the bedside potty) bureaus for our master bedroom, reupholstering the chairs and making the floor cloths.

Has anyone heard of floor cloths? They are superbly awesome!! They are the awesomeness of a well decorated rug but with the efficiency of a laminate floor. And what's great is that you can use them anywhere!!! On the back porch, bedroom(with a rug pad underneath), mud room and in other convenient places. In the upcoming weeks I'll be posting more tutorials about floor cloths, dining chair restoration and drapery making.

Anyone else interested in floor cloths? Or making your own custom drapes?